I think that is a fair question. Cheaper would obviously be better, but unless or until they are cheap, they are not disposable.

I think Ukraine is lots of evidence that of how important it is to have air superiority, even at extreme cost. If Russia had gained air superiority as many expected, the war would have been over shortly.

https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...

The customer demands the best, because if they do not have it the adversary will have it, and that is unacceptable. Even given that 110 million (assuming current 2024 dollars) is pretty cheap: the Grippen comes in at around that based on Brazilian purchases and is much less capable, being a 1990's design.

Woah, I could not believe this post, until I looked it up. Wiki says: <<On 24 October 2014, Brazil and Sweden signed a 39.3 billion SEK (US$5.44 bn, R$13 bn) contract for 28 Gripen E (single-seat version) and eight Gripen F (dual-seat version) fighters for delivery from 2019 to 2024 and maintained until 2050>>

That is 150M USD per plane. However, this might include maintenance costs, which would make it different from most F35 purchases that I have seen. Does anyone know any more specific details?

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

I'm not really sure what maintenance costs over that period in a contract look like: certainly getting them down to a number introduces a bunch more risks for someone (inflation etc), and not having them has other risks. Getting numbers here is sadly hard, and I agree my comparison might be not apples to apples.

Even if the flyaway cost of a Grippen is $50 million the number of planes to accomplish the same mission is a lot more, and some of that number will be lives lost. I'm pretty confident it's within half an order of magnitude of F-35 price.

The wikipedia page lists 9 digit flyaway costs for other Gripen versions, so even if it includes some support, the bulk of the price is the jet.

Edit: 5th generation jets are just incredibly expensive. I can't imagine how mad Turkey was when the US bilked them for their F35s, keeping both the jets and the billions Turkey paid.

Shouldn't have planned to let Russia see the radar returns then.

Interesting. My understanding is that the US refused to deliver after Turkey bought S-400 systems from Russia, and will still sell the F-35 to Turkey if they stop. Do the systems share radar returns with mother Russia or what exactly is the concern?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240202005500/https://ca.news.y...

Bingo. These systems are not packaged goods, but come with services that depend on getting a lot of the data to improve the system, and it's hard to control how they share. An air defense system is part of a network.

A 737-MAX10 costs more, and it's almost all empty space.

A supertanker costs more and it’s just empty tanks.